Surreal estate: Robin Hood's hideout

Fountain Dale House

Plenty of country homes claim to have a storybook setting, but one 18th-century English manor comes with a library full of literary legacy. Legend has it Robin Hood first met Friar Tuck behind Fountain Dale House, this 12-bedroom, 8-bathroom property in Nottinghamshire, England, now listed for about $2.4 million. In addition to acquiring ten merry acres near Sherwood Forest, the new owner will get a 6,000-square-foot main house and 2,300-square-foot guesthouse, both listed on the UK’s registry of historic buildings. Robin Hood isn’t the only literary hero connected to the residence: Sir Walter Scott wrote parts of Ivanhoe here, and Washington Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, mentioned Fountain Dale in his Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey.